The Tour de Troit was pretty cool, and if Saturday’s picture looks muddy and pixelated, well, I apologize. I tried to fix the tiny picture — bug in WordPress for mobile devices, IMO — and it ‘sploded. Oh, well. It’s not like there aren’t 90 zillion other pix out there if you feel like searching #tdt2013 in the usual social networks.

More than 6,000 riders, we were told. You’d think riding in a group that size, it would be difficult to go off course, but somehow we managed. Don’t look at me, I was just following the people in front of me when suddenly there was a SCREEEECH of brakes and a very pissed-off driver what-the-hell’d us as we rolled through an intersection. An intersection without the usual police, corking it. And hey, there weren’t any at that last intersection, either, were they? A bunch of us stopped and consulted with the map, and a bunch more took out their phones and stared at those, and we managed to cobble together a way back to the route. It involved taking a group of three dozen or so down Woodward, a daunting proposition for some people who thought they’d be riding in a tunnel of police protection, but we got everybody back to the group, and now a few out-of-towners will have a better story to tell.

Afterward, there was beer and food and music. I observed a man at the next table learn that you are supposed to take the corn husk off before you eat a tamale. (“That’s nothing,” said Alan. “I’ve seen Hispanic people learn that lesson.”) A chilly morning turned into a glorious afternoon, one of those days when you’re happy to be right here, right now.

Then I took a nap. Because of the beer.

The weekend didn’t go so well elsewhere. I’m reading about the Kenyan mall attack now, one of those events you’re frankly amazed doesn’t happen more often. I am, anyway. Terrorists are fond of bombs, but there’s nothing like a few well-trained, or even adequately trained men with guns to do maximum damage in the right environment. If only all those shoppers had been armed! I’m not saying we wouldn’t get our hair mussed. But I do say no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops.

And if you haven’t seen it yet, you should check out this remarkable NYT photo blog of the massacre, with pictures taken by a staff photographer who was actually in the mall at the time of the shooting.

Speaking of shooting, I also strongly recommend this piece from the WashPost, about the life of shooting-rampage survivor, and of their loved ones. It is, what’s the word? Oh yeah: Searing.

“Thoughts and prayers and it ends there,” said Lori Haas, whose daughter was shot and injured at Virginia Tech. “I can’t do anything anymore with thoughts and prayers.”

“I’m learning that you have to be brutal with these people,” said Patricia Maisch, who wrestled away a magazine clip and disarmed the shooter at a 2011 event in Tucson where Gabrielle Giffords and 18 others were shot. Maisch took out a picture she carried of the six people killed at that event and set it on the table. “Now I show this to people and start getting graphic,” she said. “This is not a pretty death like you see on ‘NCIS’ or ‘Law and Order.’ This is six people murdered on the sidewalk on a beautiful Arizona day.”

“Bloody and scared,” said Bill Badger, who was shot in the back of the head that day.

“Oh, and by the way, loved ones aren’t lost. They are killed,” Haas said.

“Murdered,” said Roxanna Green, whose 9-year-old daughter was murdered at the event in Arizona.

“I just want to shake people,” Badger said. “If this was some disease . . . we’d be in a national emergency.”

“You’d see planes dropping medicine,” Maisch said. “Instead, it’s another day. It’s nothing.”

Also searing, but in a very different way: “Tomato Can Blues,” also from Sunday’s NYT, a story about a mid-Michigan loser MMA fighter and the tangled web he wove along the way to faking his death and holding up a store called, I am not kidding, Guns & Stuff.

It’s an entertaining kind of searing. I kept imagining Bunchy Donovan as the tomato can, and if you get that reference, fine, and if not, I’m not going to explain it.

And so the week begins. May yours be filled with smooth sailing and apple cider.

We seem to be having connectivity problems again. It’s late, and I really don’t have what it takes to sit here and negotiate with it again. Open thread, if you can get through, OK?

Two links: The worst graffiti in Detroit. I like boobs!

Death of an adjunct. Keep this in mind when you’re paying tuition.

Let’s try for better luck tomorrow.

Another day, another mass shooting. What is there to say about this one?

NPR gave it about five or six minutes, which might have been the limit of known facts, or a strategy to distinguish itself from cable news. Can’t say. As soon as I heard the news, I sighed and decided to wait until the Home Final was delivered, so to speak. And now that it’s on the doorstep, here’s what I have learned:

Well, there’s racism. Among other things.

Sigh. Let’s skip to the bloggage; I’m very tired.

I see Betsy McCaughey is peddling the same old snake oil.

A good one from Neil Steinberg. The homeless have very 19th-century medical lives:

In her 12 years with the Night Ministry, the last line of assistance for Chicago’s impoverished, Schreiber has seen much that medical professionals rarely see: trenchfoot, frostbite, gangrene, untreated fractures, gashes that victims sutured themselves with clear tape. “These people are so marginalized, they hesitate to seek health care,” she said. “These people just suffer.”

Baby Holly’s great line in Sunday’s “Breaking Bad?” IMPROVISED. Gives me hope for our bullet-strewn future, but right now, I’m going to bed.

The Free Press did its readers a real service over the weekend. Though we might wish they’d cashiered Albom, they actually did something better, publishing a comprehensive, no-stone-unturned, no-urban-legend-unaddressed report on why, precisely, Detroit went bankrupt. It’s a fascinating document, but thousands of words long. If you’re a resident, it’s essential reading. If you’re a municipal finance nerd — a surprising number of them are out there — ditto. If you just appreciate finding answers that aren’t easy, can’t be summarized in a tweet or a few minutes on some cable-news yak show, you might also benefit from it. If there are three essential paragraphs, it’s these:

When all the numbers are crunched, one fact is crystal clear: Yes, a disaster was looming for Detroit. But there were ample opportunities when decisive action by city leaders might have fended off bankruptcy.

If Mayors Jerome Cavanagh and Roman Gribbs had cut the workforce in the 1960s and early 1970s as the population and property values dropped. If Mayor Dennis Archer hadn’t added more than 1,100 employees in the 1990s when the city was flush but still losing population. If Kilpatrick had shown more fiscal discipline and not launched a borrowing spree to cover operating expenses that continued into Mayor Dave Bing’s tenure. Over five decades, there were many ‘if only’ moments.

“Detroit got into a trap of doing a lot of borrowing for cash flow purposes and then trying to figure out how to push costs (out) as much as possible,” said Bettie Buss, a former city budget staffer who spent years analyzing city finances for the nonpartisan Citizens Research Council of Michigan. “That was the whole culture — how do we get what we want and not pay for it until tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow?”

Compare it, if you read, to these two smug pinheads — one Manhattan Institute, one Wall Street Journal editorial board — discussing former mayor Coleman Young (who singlehandedly CRUSHED DETROIT) somewhere in the WSJ video studio, where evidently the standards for on-camera performance fall well short of, say, Fox News.

Finally, in one of the surest demonstrations of the value of most internet comment sections (not this one!), the very first one that appeared on this one, after I waded through thousands of words of exhaustively researched reporting? “Unions = Corruption = Democrats = Detroit. Stop O-bomb-a!”

Zing.

So. How was your weekend? Mine was pretty good. We had two 17-year-old houseguests, the son of one of my Fort Wayne friends and one of his friends. They came to town to play in a tournament of Magic, the Gathering, which is a card game so nerdy one of the boys said he’s heard tournament organizers ask players to please consider their personal hygiene before sitting down at the table. (I sliced a pungent onion for the crock pot Sunday morning, Kate made a face and he said he’d been smelling so much B.O. recently he didn’t even notice.) It was great to have teenage boys around, if for no other reason than they always clean their plates. Always. And these two made their beds, too.

Took a 20-mile bike ride. Watched “Scanners” with the boys. Made pulled pork (the onion). It was a good one.

So, bloggage?

I liked Joyce Maynard’s take on J.D. Salinger, enough that if Prospero feels like going into a towering snit about her not being fit to wipe his boots or whatever, he — or anyone else who raises this point — is welcome to kiss my nether regions. A 53-year-old who woos an 18-year-old “woman” is a creep, pure and simple.

The Ralph Lauren spring 2014 collection, via T-Lo. Blackwhiteblackwhiteblackwhite then WHOA, COLOR.

I hope a grand week awaits us all.

It appears our connectivity has been restored, but my personal connectivity is reduced — I’m heading to Windsor for a show tonight, and so am headed out the door for that rare treat, a weeknight out with the hipsters. At least as hip as Canadians can be.

Seeing this band. Like the Black Keys, but girls. A friend of mine here in Detroit produces their rekkids. Here’s their new single.

So have some linkage: If you were thinking there’s no one in the world as annoying as Anthony Weiner, well son, you are wrong. It’s a veritable carnival of douchebags when Weiner faces…Lawrence O’Donnell.

The hearing featuring the worst Grosse Pointe husband ever produced this killer lead:

Detroit — Robert Bashara wooed an Oregon woman he hoped would join him and his girlfriend in a polygamous relationship by mailing her a T-shirt he’d worn for several days, a leather collar — and a gift certificate to the Olive Garden restaurant, according to court testimony Thursday.

What do you think constituted the sadism? The Olive Garden gift card?

Guess what I passed on my bike ride today? The Google street view car. I waved. How long before that stuff uploads?

Have a great weekend, all.

When did we start saying “so, this happened” to describe, um, stuff that happened? Don’t know? Well, what does it matter? Anyway, this happened:

That was the Pooch Prance, at the Ford house, formally known as Edsel and Eleanor’s Crib on Lake St. Clair. Has there ever been grass so green, sky and water so blue, a day so fair? Don’t think so. We raised a tidy sum for the shelter pups, and Wendy met her fan club, all the ladies who took care of her before she came to us in June. We made two laps of the estate, watched the raffle and watched the people, who were more interesting than the dogs, frankly. (At one point there was an announcement that whoever left three dogs in a silver Toyota should take them out, and there was an audible gasp throughout the tent. Wrong place to pull that move, whoever did that.)

Thanks to all of you who donated to the cause. We met several dogs who had been adopted through the Michigan Anti-Cruelty Society; they do make a difference, and now so do you.

Also, this happened:

Those are members of the local Hare Krishna temple, venerating the deities. Six times a day they do this. Yes, it was the day of our annual ride to say hello and Hare Krishna to our near-neighbors. This year, we took a tour of the old Fisher mansion, where the temple is located. Quite a place, with its spectacular craftsmanship — Pewabic tile, painted leather walls, carved everything, gold leaf everything else, parquet and inlay and yadda-to-the-yadda — now augmented with paintings of Krishna and flowers and stuff. The place has hardly been lovingly cared for over the years, but the floors have nary a creak, they’re so solid.

Detroit never stops surprising you.

Bloggage:

Mitch Albom, two takes. Local, and Deadspin.

How Syria built its chemical-weapon stockpile under the world’s noses…

…with a little help via the untracked seas.

Let’s have a good week, all.

So, I figured what, roughly, we will need to cover Kate’s schooling, should she make it into the prestigious college 55 miles to the west. All in? About $25,000 a year. For a public university.

Meanwhile, though, happy news! The University of Michigan accepted an enormous gift this week – $200 million from a distinguished, and very rich, alum. The bad news: It all goes to the B-school and athletics. Which moved Laura Berman to write this column raising a few questions:

But for all the fabulousness these gifts portend, they are also exclusive, directed solely toward future moguls and managers, football players and star athletes. The $100 million athletic donation will benefit a few hundred athletes on a campus of more than 42,000 students.

No future doctors, engineers, biologists, teachers or social workers will likely be touched by Ross’ beneficence. Honors College students — the best and brightest of the liberal arts undergrads — reside at West Quad, a 1937 dormitory lacking an elevator. Professors are tucked into warren-like offices in historic buildings that have scarcely been dusted for decades.

U-M athletics and the business school are heavily endowed, but destined to be more so, even as the public funding that built most of the campus shrinks. The passions of the wealthy begin to drive university priorities and to turn students’ heads. Who will opt for the dingy school of education when the ritzy Ross-Carlton campus beckons?

You should read the comments on that story. (No you shouldn’t.) Overwhelmingly opposed. I thought it was pretty thoughtful, myself.

Of course, you don’t have to send your kid to a big football academy. But half my high school class went to Ohio State. (I went to a marching-band academy, myself.)

Meanwhile, yeah, the tuition is too damn high. Check out that pool at Purdue!

This week has taken it out of me — and it was only four days long. I think I might be anemic.

But time to rest up for the Pooch Prance. Have a great weekend, all.

I don’t want to venture into the realm of serious TMI, so let me put this delicately: When a lady can’t become a mommy anymore, certain things about her body change. Some of these changes are well-known to the general population, others kept quiet among the crone sisterhood, and still others? Let me put it this way: One day a lady-who-can’t-become-a-mommy-anymore might find herself madly googling “head sweat after 50.” I’m not talking about hot flashes, I’m talking about one day realizing all your schvitz plumbing appears to have been rerouted to your scalp.

It’s very strange. Also not strange. There are medical conditions that can cause this, but I don’t think any apply to me, and besides, when I read medical advice that advises treating cranial hyperhidrosis by avoiding spicy foods and garlic, frankly I’d rather wear a Richard Simmons headband all day. And I don’t walk around dripping, but when I exercise, I’m a veritable sprinkler.

So the other day I was scheduled to give blood. The bloodmobile comes to my gym every major holiday, and I usually roll up a sleeve. I scheduled my appointment at 10:15 and arrived at 9. Lifted weights for an hour, rinsed my face, combed my soaking hair and checked in.

A large male LPN took me aside and asked if I’d just “worked out hard.” Not really, but yeah, I know, I look pretty wrung out. I’m fine. I’m just sweaty. I ate a good breakfast and drank a quart of water this morning, and I’ve never had so much as a wobble after a blood donation. Seriously. Find me a cot and let’s do this.

They rejected me. Rejected! For sweatiness. The LPN said they’d had someone else who arrived in similar dampness “go down” at the last drive, and I guess they didn’t want another one. I looked at him and wondered whether he wanted to hear what happens to a lady when she can’t become a mommy, and decided instead to go quietly.

And this is what my life has become: Being sweat-rejected was the highlight of my holiday weekend. OK, no it wasn’t. We went to the jazz festival Saturday to see Kate’s bass teacher get a big award, along with Dave Brubeck, who unfortunately couldn’t accept. I made steak tacos with fire-roasted salsa and guacamole, all homemade, all delish. I woke myself up at 6 a.m. by rubbing my eyes, my hands still carrying some capsaicin. Rode my bike hard for 30 miles or so. Thoroughly enjoyed the end of what’s been a great summer. In fact, I’m sorta looking forward to fall — new projects, new shoes, long sleeves.

I will miss these awesome peaches, though. Who wouldn’t?

Read this. Commit to memory. Follow its advice. And never risk instilling narcolepsy in your next meeting or memo.

I know this was Diana Nyad’s near-lifelong dream and all, and congratulations to her, but the pictures of her afterward make me wonder why.

So, happy new year to all. School starts today, and my car’s check-engine light went on. Fingers crossed, because we’re well into the nickel-and-dime years with this girl.

Those of you who live in the nation’s squeaky-clean places, your Iowas and Minnesotas, with their fine schools and responsible public servants who actually live up to the name, pray tell: With what do your local papers fill their front pages, stories of kittens being rescued from trees? This was an inside story Thursday:

At 6:10 p.m., a 21-year-old man was fatally shot in the 11200 block of Craft. Police sources say it took several hours for Wayne County Medical Examiners to pick up the body, which lay in the street.

“That incensed the crowd,” a police supervisor who was at the scene told The News. “Something like that is entertainment for a lot of people; you could probably sell beer and popcorn.”

The officer described a chaotic scene: “The street lights were out, and it was dark” he said. “The body was laying in the street covered by a blanket for hours. There were 200 people out there getting crazy. We put crime scene tape up, but they crossed the tape. We got on a bullhorn to tell them to disperse; they didn’t comply.

“Finally, we had to call the (Special Response Team) and officers from across the city to keep the crowd away from the crime scene so homicide could investigate,” the officer said.

It reportedly took between 4 and 6 hours before the morgue picked up the body.

Inside the paper, and 11 paragraphs into the story! Above it were details on the 19 other shootings, two carjackings and a sexual assault that all took place in Detroit over the past weekend.

Sometimes I can’t believe this place. Oh, and in case you’re wondering what the Page One stories were, well, there was this:

In bankrupt and frequently bizarre Detroit, dying is easy. It’s proving you are dead that’s hard.

The story was about a days-long gap in getting certified copies of birth and death certificates from the city’s vital records department, in the days after the bankruptcy filing. The reason? To be official, they must be printed on a special embossed paper, and the paper vendor was demanding cash instead of selling on credit.

Well, they warned us bankruptcy would be a bumpy road. Guess they were right.

Bloggage for a long weekend? Yes, we haz it:

I was just saying the other day how “consider the source” has never been more important for news consumers, a fact that was made abundantly clear by this p.o.s. “news story” on a once-reputable local radio station’s website.

You know how people once used to believe incubi and succubi existed, demons that would enter a person’s room at night and have sex with them? And then it was all about aliens and their anal probes? An interesting take on how culture affects psychosis: Paranoid schizophrenics now hallucinate about hidden cameras and reality TV:

The first person to examine the curiously symbiotic relationship between new technologies and the symptoms of psychosis was Victor Tausk, an early disciple of Sigmund Freud. In 1919, he published a paper on a phenomenon he called ‘the influencing machine’. Tausk had noticed that it was common for patients with the recently coined diagnosis of schizophrenia to be convinced that their minds and bodies were being controlled by advanced technologies invisible to everyone but them. These ‘influencing machines’ were often elaborately conceived and predicated on the new devices that were transforming modern life. Patients reported that they were receiving messages transmitted by hidden batteries, coils and electrical apparatus; voices in their heads were relayed by advanced forms of telephone or phonograph, and visual hallucinations by the covert operation of ‘a magic lantern or cinematograph’. Tausk’s most detailed case study was of a patient named ‘Natalija A’, who believed that her thoughts were being controlled and her body manipulated by an electrical apparatus secretly operated by doctors in Berlin. The device was shaped like her own body, its stomach a velvet-lined lid that could be opened to reveal batteries corresponding to her internal organs.

Although these beliefs were wildly delusional, Tausk detected a method in their madness: a reflection of the dreams and nightmares of a rapidly evolving world. Electric dynamos were flooding Europe’s cities with power and light, their branching networks echoing the filigree structures seen in laboratory slides of the human nervous system. New discoveries such as X-rays and radio were exposing hitherto invisible worlds and mysterious powers that were daily discussed in popular science journals, extrapolated in pulp fiction magazines and claimed by spiritualists as evidence for the ‘other side’. But all this novelty was not, in Tausk’s view, creating new forms of mental illness. Rather, modern developments were providing his patients with a new language to describe their condition.

Finally, one to leave you disgusted and/or heartened: The Crusading Sisterhood of Revenge-Porn Victims.

Let’s all have a great weekend, and maybe we’ll see Deborah’s completed bathhouse before too long. When next we speak, it’ll be September! How’d that happen?

I had one of those days yesterday. Spent: Talking on the phone, leaving messages, sending a million emails and mostly hoping we don’t bomb fucking Syria.

Even though I know we’re going to bomb Syria. How many times do we have to learn this lesson? Or rather, how many times does it have to be taught before we learn?

At the end of it, I rode my bike through some seriously bombed-out neighborhoods adjacent to GP. As usual, it was eye-popping. In two adjacent blocks, this:

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And this:

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And these photos were taken on a good day. All that vacant land is now covered in knee-high grass. The bankrupt city only mows a few feet back from the sidewalk and at the corners, so you can see cars coming. And yet, people were sitting on their porches, talking to their neighbors, smiling and laughing. This is not a nightly event in my neighborhood.

In my web work today, though, I found an awful lot of tasty linkage. Let’s get to it.

The Daily Beast isn’t good for much, but I enjoyed this piece on “Breaking Bad” and its dependency on our stupid health-care system. The short version: Breaking Bad Canada.

I don’t generally follow links to stories that promise me Pat Robertson has OMG’d in his pants again, but this latest one made it all so clear to me: This man is senile. He’s senile and no one wants to say anything to him, because he’s the boss. I bet he wanders the backstage areas of the “700 Club,” talking to the walls, and everyone leaves him alone because they think he’s at prayer. Imagine what he says when he doesn’t think the cameras are on. And where can I get my special AIDS-spreading hand-slicing ring?

While we’re at the megachurches of the world, this made me laugh. Because I am a bad, bad person. (How does a guy presumably demonstrate enough bird-savvy to get a permit to own bald eagles and then take them into indoor spaces and let them fly around? You could see that one coming a mile away.)

Today’s Only in Detroit story: Father and daughter caught trying to bring $270,000 in cash through Metro Airport.

Finally, the March on Washington at 50 roundup. When MLK Day became a national holiday, a friend wondered how long before we’d see “I Have a Dream, and Now You Can Too!!!” January mattress sales. In our lifetimes, I predicted. Not quite, but we’re getting there.

I think we’ve all heard about the King estate’s zealous guardianship of its copyright on the man’s writing and image, but here’s a wrap-up. Personally, I have no problem with a dead artist’s work supporting his immediate family, but once we get into the second and third generation, I think it’s a good thing copyright is not indefinite in this country. (Unless you’re Disney, of course.)

Finally, because eagles crashing into windows and babbling old bigots and the like might lead you to think I’m some sort of monster, let’s close with this genuinely good-news story that isn’t sappy or Albom-ish in any way. Quick, read it before the man himself makes it that way. From New Jersey:

Surveillance video from the Buddy’s Small Lots on Route 23 showed four young men entering the closed store Sunday night, taking a few goods and — wait for it — paying for them in full.

They didn’t know it at the time, but they were caught on camera doing the right thing.

A report from News 12 New Jersey about the incident spread far and wide, appearing on local TV stations across the U.S. The Huffington Post called them “accidental burglars,” and the store’s management wanted to offer them a reward.

Who were these mystery men? New additions to William Paterson University’s football team, school officials told NJ.com.

We’re on the downslope of the week, folks. Let’s enjoy it.